


After Gethsemane

by sparksofwrite



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Chapter 77 spoilers, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Introspection, Self-Hatred, Tags mostly for safety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 19:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5678218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparksofwrite/pseuds/sparksofwrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Chapter 77 spoilers!)</p><p>He must have been an older brother, she thinks. It’s easy to imagine him with a mess of freckled, smiling little siblings, clamoring for their oldest brother’s attention like worshipping a hero. He’s so patient and caring. You can't just decide to be those things, Annie knows. Or at least, it doesn’t work unless you’ve been raised that way. Marco was the kind of genuine that could only be bred from birth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Gethsemane

**Author's Note:**

> In light of recent chapters, the "Annie Leonhardt moved Marco's body" fic.
> 
> So the idea for this particular fic is headcanon, but the events leading up to it are spoilers, so please skip this if you haven't read chapter 77 yet! (And what a great chapter it was too, holy shit.) Also skip if you're averse to some description of gore? I don't think there's too much of it, but just to be safe, don't read if that bothers you.
> 
> And finally, will I ever stop making Biblical references for series where Christianity doesn't even exist? We just don't know. (It stops at the title, I promise.)

He must have been an older brother, she thinks. It’s easy to imagine him with a mess of freckled, smiling little siblings, clamoring for their oldest brother’s attention like worshipping a hero. He’s so patient and caring. You can't just decide to be those things, Annie knows. Or at least, it doesn’t work unless you’ve been raised that way. Marco was the kind of genuine that could only be bred from birth.

 

It would feel disrespectful to drag him through the dirt by his remaining arm. The pop of his shoulder dislocating in her hands would probably be even worse. Lacking a better method, Annie pulls his limp arm around her neck, fumbles her clammy left hand around his forearm. The next part is tricky, with half his body leaking viscera. She can’t reach around him without getting too much blood on her clothes, three hours since most of the fighting ended. She doesn’t trust herself to come up with a good excuse.

 

 _It didn’t feel right._ He’d fallen— spilled, really— from the Titan’s mouth, half uneaten. Maybe even it knew what a crime it was to kill him. His body was starting to stiffen now, and there wasn’t much of his head to speak of, but his neck lolled in a way that raked chills down her spine. Headfirst, then, he’d crumpled in the middle of the street. Mina, Ruth, the only girls who would have noticed her missing, were also dead somewhere. _It didn’t feel right._ That was her excuse for moving him.

 

It won’t work this way. She gets a better grip on his arm— that’ll be her most stable hold, and she doesn’t know how she’ll pick him up again if she drops him too badly. His other half is wide open. She only looks long enough to find a hold.

 

Her hand closes around the sharp remains of his ribs and in the instant her blood turns to horrified ice she’s already heaving him out of the street. She just wants to… prop him up, or something, give him something a little more dignified than being strewn, broken, across the cobblestones. But her fingers are digging into the connective tissue still holding his snapped bones together, that’s all that keeps him from falling the fuck apart, and she’s almost to the building but the panic is rising up her throat into a screech—

 

She drops him as delicately as she can _(I’m so fucking sorry)_ and runs a few paces to retch her disgust into the gutter. Her stomach is already empty, but she heaves with sobs, and just when she’s starting to calm down she catches herself almost right-handedly wipe her face and then she loses it again.

 

Human deaths are a much gentler concept when she isn’t so painfully human, but now she’s just another pathetic bag of blood and bile, mourning over blood and bile she allowed to spill. Her Titan form feels like wearing armor, or stepping back, detached instead of actively participating. Maybe Reiner has the right idea, on all counts.

 

She remembers Bertholdt’s gentle coaxing: since they were children, when Reiner would get a little too angry or upset, Bertholdt would put a hand over his and remind him to breathe, counting down for him. That stopped as they aged, especially when they all went into training, but every once in a while Annie would notice Bertholdt’s hand on Reiner’s, a silent reminder before it was quickly withdrawn. Annie tries to regulate her breathing now, but keeps choking on tears or having to spit out stomach acid. Pathetic.

 

Annie pulls herself together soon enough, using the outside of her left wrist to mop her face clean. Marco is lying exactly where she left him, which surprises her in some bizarre, delayed way. _Is it that easy to forget what you’ve done?_

 

When she tries to prop him up against the wall, his body slides down. But it’s almost sundown, so this is the best it’ll get. She nudges his legs straight and gingerly rests his hand on his stomach. He definitely doesn’t look like he’s peacefully sleeping, but he looks… a little bit cared for. Not a fraction of what he deserves, but all she can give him.

 

Annie’s broken enough of her personal rules today, so she doesn’t linger. She steels herself and follows the streets of Trost back to the 104th. When she returns, maybe her answer to Reiner’s question, _Have you started to feel compassion for this evil race?!,_ will be just a little bit closer to _no_ because of it. She doesn’t like doubting herself, and she hates questioning the family she’s sacrificed so much for. It would just be so much easier to be a Titan all the time, to truly steel herself, to be armored against the world.

 

But there’s no way to truly harden her emotions, even if she was willing to ignore them long enough to send a friend to his death. She wishes she could be as hardened in her human form as her Titan one, not the raw, self-loathing, sentimental mess she’s lapsed into being.

 

_Prove that you are different from this defiled race._

 

(She thinks of Marco’s honest innocence, the way he gave her the benefit of the doubt until the very end. Marco probably has little siblings, a loving mother, a proud father, freckled, smiling and kind people. Genuinely good people. Yes, Annie is different.)

 

She walks with purpose, cold, blank and steely. No apologies, no sympathy.

 

She’ll have to find his Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear on the way back.


End file.
